What drives biofuel Bush?

What’s with Biofuel Bush? The (dirty) secret of the new ethanol craze is that it is, once again, a Bush family business. Brother Jeb is one of the three chairmen of the Miami-based Inter-American Ethanol Commission (set up in December) along with a former agriculture minister in the previous Lula administration, agribusiness tycoon Roberto Rodrigues, and Colombian Luis Alberto Moreno, president of the Inter-American Development Bank.

Rodrigues spent Bush’s visit to Sao Paulo perfecting his bombastic pitch all over Brazilian corporate media – stressing that “what we are doing here is launching a new civilization” based on biofuels. Jeb’s pitch is way more pragmatic. In essence it involves, in the medium term, importing less oil from Chavez (12% of daily US needs) and more biofuel from friendly and/or pliable Brazil, Colombia, Central America and the Caribbean.
What this will mean in practice is hardcore US neo-colonization of Central America and the Caribbean – as vast sugarcane plantations – to feed US demand. The construction of an ethanol factory in Haiti – the poorest country in Latin America – has already been broached in the Bush-Lula discussions. Brazil leads the UN peacekeeping force in Haiti. The Haiti factory would be a model for the whole regional ethanol boom – US capital mixed with Brazilian technology profiting from a cheap local workforce.

Inevitably, the ethanol boom also fits the pattern of Latin America – in US hegemonic conception – as a mere “back yard”, our “neighborhood” (a favorite Bushism) historically adept at providing fabulous natural resources, slave or semi-slave labor, strategic

outposts, and markets (including financial) for US oligarchies.

No wonder US hedge funds and investment banks, as well as the Sao Paulo agribusiness bourgeoisie, are pouring the champagne. What Brazilian producers actually want, medium-term, is not so far-fetched: a hemisphere-wide E10 brand of gasoline (blended with 10% ethanol).

Asia Times